BATTERED TUBES
Clive Worrall wants to paint his tasty trials Goldie frame – but having seen service without a bash plate, the lower tubes have taken a bit of a punishing. He asks if I can think of a way to remedy the damage; or if not, if there’s a period reinforcement that would disguise it but look in-keeping.
Well you can see why Clive wants to deal with it from the photo above. It looks a bit too bad for filling by lead loading or brazing in bits of steel, and I imagine even if you filled the dents this way it will have flared out oval in other directions and would still look pretty awful. Short of cutting out the affected bit and replacing it, I can’t see much you can do unless it’s possible to electricweld a few lengths of bar to the most affected areas and then pull them out by using a slide hammer process – ideally cold (although the steel is probably too thick) or by heating up the area with gas and letting it cool slowly afterwards. Either way it’s likely to end up pretty gnarledlooking but might get the tube back round enough to dress out high spots with a hammer and fill the remaining indents. Let’s hope so!